Candy Canes

I haven't had a candy cane since I was diagnosed with all of my food allergies back in 2007. The big hit was corn...I mean really corn syrup? No more candy from the Sweet Factory, no more popcorn at the movies...and no more candy canes. But yesterday we were shopping at Mothers and I found an organic candy cane.

 

 

I literally started yelling at Curtis, they have a candy cane here and I can eat it! I was so excited to find a candy cane that I could eat. Heck I get excited when I find anything that I can eat from my old life...But you bet I'm going to be enjoying these all weekend!

 

My lounging around clothes, I would no do a fashing blogger proud

 

I'm working on a Christmas craft this weekend, I should have that up sometime next week. So excited to show you what I made! I'll give you a small hint, it involves clothes pins.

 So weird to not have Baby Fox here right now. But he's having a blast at my parents house. They're going to go Christmas light looking tonight and up to the local mall which has fake snow falling. Wish I could see that! Hopefully they take pictures.

 

Happy Weekend!

Going Home

I grew up about 100 miles north of where I live now. My husband considers it BFE, I consider it home, no matter how many years I live away from home, it's still marked as HOME in my cell phone. When we went to visit my parents for Thanksgiving, driving into my parents community I was reminded of how much I loved growing up there.

Look at those pretty leaves

Today is the last day of my week, happy "Friday" to me! I'm going up to Big Bear to spend some much needed one on one with my bestie, we thought it would be a great opportunity for Mr. to get some music time in, so we asked my parents if they could take him for the weekend. Usual protocol means that we meet at the In and Out by LAX around 9:30pm (leaving our house at Baby Fox's bed time of 8:30), we usually swap cars so we don't have to switch the car seat from car to car, and all the stuff that Baby Fox requires. So we planned on doing this tonight, wait till bed time, load up the car and leave. Yesterday when we put him to bed, we didn't think that my parents would be so anxious to get him that they would want to drive all the way to our house to drive him back to their house before we even got home from work. When we put him to bed last night, we thought we'd get another evening with him before sending him packing. After the decision was made, we thought, we didn't even get to say goodbye! You bet we went and got him, gave him an extra little hug (or 4 or 5), before telling him Grandpa would pick him up before nap time. Sniff...

Keep reminding myself, he loves going over there, and he's going to have a fantastic time, eating ice cream and pretty much anything he wants for 3 days. On the flip side, now Mr. and I have two nights free at our own house without the baby before I go to Big Bear. What are we going to do? Go sit at a restaurant and enjoy a relaxing dinner of course. Looking forward to that! And then perhaps go buy some gifts on Friday cause Mr. decided to take Friday off with me. Will try not to think too much about how I miss this little face, and think only about how much people love Baby Fox and how he's getting to know his grandparents like I know mine, and one day think of their house as his second home like I did.

Baby Fox watching some cartoons early morning after breakfast with "Bear", "Dog Dog" and "Blanket"

Green Beans and Bacon

Anything added to bacon has to make it more delicious right? Well try green beans and bacon, most awesome way to make your grean beans unhealthy. Really.

First - Start with a pound of bacon. Cook until you get your desired crispness.

Then add a whole lot of green beans. I took this picture just to show you that the bacon is indeed under all those green beans. I used one of those packages of green beans from Costco, I'm guessing it was about a pound or so? You know the ones I'm talking about, it's in the cold room in Costco? Right?

Stir them around, put a lid on it and then put heat to low. Can cook really for as long as you like. I just cooked mine as long as I was cooking everything else. Which took me way longer then I thought, so they were probably sitting there simmering for a good 2 hours or so...

And of course the really healthy green beans in the end. So yummy, we try to only have these once or twice a year if that...they're so good, you can't stop eating them.

See how much they cook down?

 

Obviously you can use more or less green beans or bacon...but I find that the more the bacon the happier the green beans are and the better it tastes, duh, anything with bacon grease has to taste good.

 

So go make this the side dish you bring to your Christmas dinner, really it's that good. People might turn up their noses at first, but once they take that first bite, they're a goner!

That Time I Wore Make-up

Okay, so it's not full on make-up, but it more then I do on a normal weekday. My thoughts on not wearing make up during the week, 1) I work with engineers, they could car less about what I wore or if I had make-up on. 2) I absolutely HATE taking it off, especially if it's a gym day, I don't want to be one of those girls who goes to the gym in full make up, but I'm too lazy to take it off. Plus I need to find a new eye-make up remover. I typically will use a waterproof eye liner, which always proves hard to remove, any of you have suggestions? 3) I wake up at 4:45am everyday, I get tired and sometimes rub my eyes...rubbing eyes with eye make up on is no recommended. Bottom line, don't get used to seeing me with make up on. But...I did actually go through a whole compact of foundation/powder from Mac, before it either broke or I lost it...so I'm getting better then in years past...I'm growing up...and stuff.

I decided to try out colored tights and the belt over the sweater thing, mostly because this dress is sleeveless and I really like it and wanted to wear it to the birthday party we went to on Sunday. That and my comfy jeans were dirty and I didn't feel like wearing my slightly uncomfortable jeans which requires me to wear really tall shoes so they don't drag on the ground to a 2 year old birthday party.

 Please excuse the lack of water in the fountain (no excuses we just took the water out because we weren't using it enough and it was starting to grow things) and the no plants in the background (just got our backyard re-done and need to save up money to buy the plants that go with it - you know how it goes with home improvement)

So it's not a lot of make-up, just enough to make me look put together and not tired, IMO of course

Dress -Old Navy (similar), Sweater - H&M, Belt - Target, Tights - Loehmann's, Boots - Jessica Simpson

Weekend of Friends

This weekend was all too short! It seems like I was just leaving work on Friday and then suddenly it was Sunday night and we're getting ready for work today. But it was a great weekend with great friends. It started off the right way by me leaving work at noon to meet up with a friend that I met on the internet. Yep, I met her on a mommy board when we first got pregnant and she was in town from Hawaii and we finally got to meet. It was so nice to met her after talking to her almost everyday for 2.5 years! Her daughter and Baby Fox are about 3 weeks apart.

and our cute kids couldn't have gotten along any better.

Saturday I got to workout and do some errands sans kid and husband, it was an awesome start to my Saturday. I had decided last week that I wanted to make another Thanksgiving dinner, because of my food allergies I wasn't able to eat most of what we had last week, so I decided to make another Thanksgiving dinner. Yum! While I was busy cooking, Mr. decided to take Baby Fox swimming. Gotta love a heated spa.

We invited some friends over go help us celebrate Thanksgiving Part 2. We actually did this last year too, so I guess now that we've done this two years in a row, according Mr. it's a tradition. So expect it again next year. Expect the coming week with pictures of what I made.

And of course our cute kids, they are 10 days apart.

They had another baby 4 months ago, Mr. and I fought over who got to hold the squishy baby newness...It's always awesome to get together with them, we used to live in the same complex but then we both had to go buy houses that are not close enough to each other, boo. Fun fact, we met them because they used to be our orthodontists and then we happen to move into the same apartment complex on the same day and then randomly bought houses the same month a year later and of course then had babies 10 days apart. Talk about fate bringing us together and wanting us to be friends. They are the ones that also got us into snowboarding, which we are forever grateful.

Sunday was fun filled again with more friends. We went to a friends 2nd birthday party. I met this awesome lady and her little lady, when we were new parents trying to find some friends in the area. Our kids are 3 weeks apart.

A picture of them at 3 months old

and now at her second birthday party, time flies by I'm telling ya.

 Then Sunday night we had Baby Fox's Godparents over to help us eat the left overs from the previous day. I forgot to take a picture, darn. OH well, but it was definitely a great weekend full of great friends. We really are so thankful to have such wonderful people in our lives!

Linking up with these fabulous people today

Sami at Sami's Shenanigan's

Dana at Five 30 Three

and Leeann at Join the Gossip

for "Weekend Update"

also:

Faith at Life of Faith

Life with Three Under Three at Monkey's and Tutus

Sarah at The Not uite Military Wife

and Megan at The Mrs.

for "Mommy Moments Blog Hop"

Family Pictures

With Christmas coming up, it's that time again we take Christmas photos. Since my brother has just gotten married and moved out of state, it wasn't possible to have a professional photographer take our entire family pictures again like last year. Instead we set up a tri-pod (aka a ladder) and took our own photos in my parents backyards when we were all together for Thanksgiving.

and here are my cute parents, they were my test subjects to make sure the remote control worked, and that the camera was set up in the correct spot. They're going to be celebrating their 42nd wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks! Congrats to them!

You saw a few of our pictures that we took this year in this post but here are a few more of my favorite pictures from our session by the amazing Brittany Keene.

 

Now that we've done this two years in a row, I'm thinking is this something that we should do every year? What are we going to do with all of those photos? Kids change so much every year and we rarely take pictures together, so I'm leaning towards the - take family pictures every year while they're still growing like weeds. What are your thoughts? What do you and your family do?

This weekend we're meeting up with a friend and her daughter from my the Mommy board I joined back in 2010 for the first time and doing Thanksgiving part 2 this weekend with some friends. Should be a fun filled weekend, what are you doing?  Have a great weekend!

Resale Boutiques

When we were in Santa Barbara last week we went to Down Town State Street and I walked into my very first Resale Boutique called The Closet. I've always wanted to go to one, but never knew of a good one to go to. I think I hit the jackpot on my first try.

I scored this awesome fake leather jacket for $36! Make me feel like no one is going to mess with me and better get out of my way when you see my walking down the street.

This jacket didn't get to see outside of the hotel, but I still wanted to wear it as soon as we got back to the hotel. I'm just glad that I happen to have things in my suitcase that would work with this jacket. Score for me!

Dress- Old Navy, Boots - DSW, Tights - Loehmann's, Jacket - The Closet (can't remember the brand, it wasn't something that I had heard of before), Jewelry - Forever 21

Randomly there was also a receipt in the jacket pocket dated to summer of 2010, it was the jacket owners birthday and she went to a bar. Always makes you wonder, who owned what you're wearing, what has it been through, and what are those people doing now? In any case, I love my new jacket and can't wait to find other outfits to pair this jacket with.

So what's your favorite resale boutique? I might just be hooked.